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Oklahoma football: Sooners are in salvage mode for Insight Bowl

COLLEGE FOOTBALL — OU has finished short of the preseason expectations, but the Sooners can still end the season with 10 wins and some momentum towards the 2012 season if they beat Iowa in the Insight Bowl.

NORMAN — Bob Stoops has made the point in recent weeks that Oklahoma, when it has not reached a Bowl Championship Series game, has really played pretty well.

Oklahoma's Gabe Ikard (64) looks on in the final minute of the Sooners 44-10 loss to OSU during the Bedlam college football game between the Oklahoma State University Cowboys (OSU) and the University of Oklahoma Sooners (OU) at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, Okla., Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. Photo by Chris Landsberger, The Oklahoman

And he's right. Following his first year, when the Sooners lost to Ole Miss in the final seconds of the Independence Bowl, OU is 3-0 in non-BCS games. That includes the Cotton, Holiday and Sun bowls in the past decade.

Here it is in another one, Friday's Insight Bowl against Iowa in Tempe, Ariz.

But, in a sense, is this even a game Oklahoma can truly win?

The Sooners are in salvage mode for a 9-3 season that was set up to be a national championship run.

And they're supposed to win. OU opened as a 16-point favorite, the largest spread in any of the 35 bowl games being played.

What's to be gained? Really, it could be a matter of the Sooners making sure nothing else is lost in 2011. An Insight win could be a big bandage for the season, a bridge toward healing as the proud program enters 2012.

“It doesn't erase anything that's happened,” Stoops said this past week. “You feel good about winning another bowl game. You feel good about winning your 10th game. This, that and the other, but it still isn't going to give us a championship.”

Not a national or Big 12 title, but athletic director Joe Castiglione did recently use the ‘C' word for this particular bowl game.

“It's a championship, in and of itself,” he said. “Our focus is to try to win the Insight Bowl and end our season on a positive note.”

There is seemingly a pride element for the Sooners, who have lost two of three – including that 44-10 blasting in Stillwater. It's been a long December of hearing about the season's shortcomings.